This study on Greater Cairo Region, Egypt, addresses urban challenges through “urban micro-lungs.” It explores designing green corridors responsive to local climate and space constraints, emphasizing resilient, public health-focused interventions for hyper-dense cities in the Global South.
How people use energy affects their health, current approaches focus on behavioral change or interventions in the home. This strategy discounts the influence of healthcare. To integrate healthcare into this issue we need to engage with how it is already understood within healthcare and what the challenges are.
Heat exposure and greenness influence health and learning outcomes. Satellite images show schools on the Coast have strong heat stress levels and low vegetation; schools in the Andes have the largest solar radiation. Reforming school infrastructure standards is urgently needed in Ecuador. To describe environmental conditions in nine Ecuadorian schools, we analyzed three variables: temperature, vegetation, and solar radiation derived from satellite images that we downloaded from Google Earth Engine. We compared schools across three ecoregions to see differences in range and average values.
Our research highlights how some groups in London, like children, ethnic minorities, and lower-income residents, experience hotter areas due to the Urban Heat Island effect. We provide a clear approach for local governments to make climate action fairer and more effective.
Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the built environment has an impact on people’s health, particularly in terms of noncommunicable diseases such as asthma, diabetes and poor mental health. However, health is rarely prioritised in urban planning decisions at present, and earlier work by this research group has shown that senior decision-makers feel they lack the power to influence planning and policy decisions in order to improve the situation. This intervention area adds to the wider research programme, which is focused primarily on the delivery of quantifiable socio-environmental and health economics valuations. People make decisions not just based on economic valuation, so an understanding of why people make decisions and how those decisions can change is essential. This paper describes the methodology that will be used to develop this intervention. Findings will be published later.
How can we systematically embed health in real estate decision-making to improve health outcomes related to our urban environment? We mapped the system of health consideration in urban development decision-making to identify leverage points and inform interventions that can generate virtuous feedback loops to support better urban health.
Public health has historically been an important factor driving urban planning policy in England but is currently rarely a priority. We explore the factors behind this, try to explain them in the context of policy developments since COVID-19, and consider what needs to change at national policy level to support healthier placemaking in the future.
Health evidence could be used more effectively to influence healthier urban development. We learn from a researcher-practitioner collaboration, involving an embedded researcher in local government working on a regeneration project, which helped to develop a new health modelling tool for environmental change and influence decision-making.
Our study investigated whether apartment dwelling and building design attributes influenced residents’ housing satisfaction in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Multivariate models showed that residents’ perceptions of their apartment’s internal space and layout and the thermal comfort it afforded them in winter were independently associated with increased housing satisfaction.
Cold spells adversely impact the mental well-being of older adults, causing depression, sleep disturbances, and social isolation. This study highlights the failure of community services to address these issues, urging policymakers and healthcare providers to implement targeted mental health interventions for this vulnerable population.